Recurvature and landfall of Atlantic hurricanes and their relationship to the NAO: An update

The past decade has seen record levels of hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin. Up until 2004, this had not translated into a higher number of hurricane landfalls along the U.S. due to their recurving before approaching the coastline. Since 2004, however, the U.S. has seen much higher levels of landfalling hurricanes. One of the reasons for this was because hurricanes forming out in the tropical North Atlantic were not recurving to the same extent as in prior years. This paper revisits and updates research on this topic originally presented at the 2002 Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology on the potential link between the North Atlantic Oscillation, hurricane recurvature and U.S. landfalls.